Special Agent Nanny

The siren still shrieking, Kelley hurried away from the smoke to the outside where people gathered in excitement and concern.

Her daughter and she would be fine, though they’d both have to be checked for smoke inhalation.

But thank heavens the only damage appeared to be to paperwork. Things. Hospital records.

The fire was certainly unfortunate.

But at least there should be no major consequences.

Chapter One

The Present

“You want me to what?” Shawn Jameson shoved his chair back from the table, stood and stared at Colleen Wellesley. “You can’t be serious.”

His boss crossed her arms without rising. About forty-five years old, with irritation narrowing her blue-green eyes, she appeared very serious. And that did not make Shawn happy at all. “You’ve got your orders,” she said quietly. “Your cover will be as a caregiver in the child-care center at Gilpin Hospital.” She was dressed like a rancher in a plaid flannel shirt and jeans. But that did not keep her from looking authoritative.

Shawn heard muffled laughter. He turned to glare at Fiona Clark, another Colorado Confidential operative, who had joined Colleen and him in the secret, basement meeting room of the Royal Flush Ranch. By the time he was able to turn a fierce gaze on her, the blond former FBI agent had pasted a sympathetic expression on her face. But there was mirth in her brown eyes.

Fiona, like Shawn, was dressed similarly to Colleen for hard work on the ranch—but that was not all they were here for. In keeping with his cover, Shawn wore a leather vest over a comfortable blue work shirt that was tucked into well-worn, faded jeans. He’d bought his boots in Texas when, while in training, he’d visited the Smoking Barrel Ranch, the cover for the original Confidential agency.

Shawn turned back toward Colleen. What could he do? These were his first orders directly from her, though she’d been his employer for a while. He had joined the staff of Investigations, Confidential and Undercover, a private investigation agency known as ICU, a couple of years ago. At first, he’d been aware that there was a secretive boss, known only as C. Wellesley, in the background calling the shots. He had only recently learned she was a woman, and even more recently met her. Here. On the ranch. When she had recruited him into Colorado Confidential, a very new, very special covert arm of the Colorado Department of Public Safety. He’d undergone training here for the past few months. It was definitely time to go to work.

But this…?

“What the hell—er, heck—do I know about tending a bunch of kids?” He ran his fingers through his short, dark blond hair in frustration. “You hear that? I don’t even know how the hell to watch my language.”

“You’ll learn,” Colleen said mildly. “Either that, or the kids’ll bring home some interesting new vocabulary.”

“Damn.” This wasn’t getting Shawn anywhere. He thought fast, taking his seat at the table once more. “Look, Colleen,” he said in a cool and logical tone. “You have someone here who can undoubtedly do a better job with this than me—Fifi.”

A growl issued from behind him. Fiona hated that nickname, but she had earned his use of it now by laughing at him.

“The fact that Fiona is female doesn’t mean she’d do better with this cover than you, Shawn,” Colleen said mildly. “And this assignment requires someone with your particular expertise—arson investigation. You do know something about that, don’t you?”

She knew full well he did. He had devoted his life to fighting fires—and to bringing down the people who set them. With good reason. Damned good reason.

“Yeah,” he agreed softly. “I know something about that.”

“There’s more to the situation than the fire that destroyed the records department of Gilpin Hospital six weeks ago,” Colleen continued. “Wiley Longbottom thinks that the fire could be connected to the flu epidemic that ran through Silver Rapids a few months back.” Longbottom was the director of the Colorado Department of Public Safety. Colleen reported to him. “He believes there’s a chance the flu was caused by the same type of microbe found in the blood samples Michael took from the sheep at the Half Spur Ranch.”

Michael Wellesley, Colleen’s brother, had just returned from an undercover assignment at that sheep ranch, which was partially owned by powerful Colorado senator Franklin Gettys. Not a man you wanted to accuse of anything without indisputable proof. He’d also brought back an unanticipated reward, his new love, Nicola Carson. She’d been the target of an assassin, and was staying at the Royal Flush under Michael’s personal protection.

Colleen continued in a deceptively mild voice, “And if so, we definitely need more information. When we got the test results from the Center for Disease Control, the blood samples showed antibodies for Q fever.”

“That’s a disease carried by livestock anyway, isn’t it?” Fiona asked.

“Yes, but Wiley thinks the Silver Rapids flu epidemic might not have been flu after all. It may have been an outbreak of Q fever. And while Q fever is often found in livestock, a human epidemic of that proportion is…suspicious. And the whole mess could have some bearing on the Langworthy kidnapping.”

“How?” Shawn demanded, stunned by Colleen’s implication that the flu could have a human source. If so, no doubt someone had a vested interest in covering it up.

“The missing baby’s mother, Holly Langworthy, was one of the people infected. At the time, she was still pregnant with little Schyler. We have to look into the fire and the flu, in case the baby’s disappearance is somehow related.”

Ah, Shawn thought. That was the crux of it. Colorado Confidential’s first major case wasn’t just high priority. It was the priority. Schyler, the infant grandson of one of Colorado’s most influential citizens, Samuel Langworthy, had been kidnapped. So far, regular law enforcement agencies with jurisdiction, even the FBI, were stymied. The Department of Public Safety had turned to the newly constituted covert agency, the country’s fourth Confidential organization, for help.

It was a case they couldn’t afford to blow. A baby’s life was at stake. More lives might hang in the balance.

“There’s a doctor on staff at the hospital, Dr. Kelley Stanton,” Colleen continued. She slowly drummed one finger on the table as if using the rhythm to remind her of the facts. Her hands were blunt nailed and work roughened. She owned this ranch, which, Shawn knew, had been in her family for generations.

“Dr. Stanton is a suspect in the arson,” Colleen went on. “She was involved with treating the flu patients, including two elderly people who died. You’ll have access to her by working at the child-care center, since she has a three-year-old daughter who goes there. Rumors around the hospital suggest she set the fire to hide her negligence in treating those patients.”

“A pretty nasty allegation,” Shawn noted.

“That would be ugly enough,” Colleen agreed. “But if Wiley’s right and there’s some relation to the kidnapping, this Dr. Stanton could be more than a quack who wants to hide some mistakes. She could be helping to cover up an act of bioterrorism as well as the kidnapping. And Wiley isn’t wrong very often. So…?” She looked directly into Shawn’s eyes and paused.

Colleen was waiting for his assent. “Yeah,” he said. He knew he would regret it. He also knew he had no choice.

“Good.” Colleen rose. “I’ll get things set up. You’ll start in three days.”

A SHORT WHILE LATER, Shawn left the others behind and stealthily oozed his way from behind the huge, movable wine rack that hid the door to the secret basement room. He had to think about this new assignment. Prepare himself for it mentally.

He headed upstairs, into the plush room that had once been the bar. One of Colleen’s ancestors had once run the Royal Flush as a saloon and bordello. The room maintained the flamboyant ambiance, complete with sexy red velvet curtains. It still housed the original long bar of dark pine, which had obviously been well polished over the many intervening years. The faint, pungent-sweet scent of fine wood preservative hung in the air. The ranch’s caretakers, Raven and Melody Castillo, took great care of the place.

Too bad the room wasn’t still used as a bar. Shawn could have used a drink. A good, stiff one.

Behind the bar was a portrait of a woman, who seemed out of place in the sumptuous and suggestive room— Eudora Wellesley, he’d been told. Colleen’s ancestress. There was nothing flamboyant or even particularly attractive in her appearance. In fact, she was dressed primly, in dark clothes, and there was a set to her mouth as if the lady was shocked by the things that had gone on in this room. And yet, the artist had painted a sparkle into her alert gray eyes.

Grumbling to himself, Shawn headed outside. He wasn’t the imaginative sort. This new twist to his career as an arson investigator turned covert agent was giving him fits.

As he stepped through the front door onto the porch, he nearly ran into Dexter Jones, the foreman. His other boss, for his cover at the Royal Flush as ranch hand.

“You seen Ms. Wellesley?” Dex asked. The foreman was in his early fifties. He kept his hair, obviously once dark but now sprinkled with silver, no-nonsense short. He seemed a no-nonsense guy, dedicated to making sure the ranch ran smoothly.

As smart and wily as tough-acting Dex seemed, the foreman supposedly had no idea of what went on in the basement. But Shawn sensed the man’s strong suspicion that more went on at the Royal Flush than just ranching.

As part of his Colorado Confidential cover, Shawn had to act as if he’d no clue what Dex was talking about when the older man blew off steam by guessing what his lady boss was really up to.

“I saw Ms. Wellesley a while ago,” Shawn told him. “I came in to ask whether she was going to ride Dora today, and if so when she wanted me to have her saddled.” Dora was Colleen’s horse, a mare she’d named after the illustrious lady whose picture hung over the bar. The bay and white paint was a lot prettier, in Shawn’s estimation, than her namesake.

“And she said—?”

“She’d let me know. I think she’s back in her room on the phone. Or maybe she’s getting changed. In any event, she said she didn’t want to be disturbed for the next hour.”

“Right,” Dex muttered, and turned on his heel without entering the house.

If Shawn wasn’t mistaken, the gruff foreman had a thing for his employer. That wasn’t any of Shawn’s business.

But his new assignment certainly was.